


so let’s (cause a scene)

by cori_the_bloody



Series: the Howard Gross Eats Pussy 'Verse [2]
Category: Never Have I Ever (TV)
Genre: F/M, One Shot, Post-Season/Series 01, Rated M for Discussions of Sex Rather than Explicit Depictions, everyone has a formative sexual encounter in a public-transportation themed parking lot, how dare you imply that any of this was written from personal experience, it could happen to anyone!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-07
Updated: 2020-09-07
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:06:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,829
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26333128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cori_the_bloody/pseuds/cori_the_bloody
Summary: or, 5 times Devi felt like having the talk with Ben would never end
Relationships: Ben Gross/Devi Vishwakumar
Series: the Howard Gross Eats Pussy 'Verse [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1898905
Comments: 23
Kudos: 95





	so let’s (cause a scene)

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to Bethany, whose excitement for this made me extra excited to finish it.
> 
> This is, like, the shippiest thing I've written for these two to-date. I kinda feel bad tagging any of the other characters I have because they feature so little. This fic is overwhelmingly all about Devi and Ben.  
> And it's for that reason that I'd like to dedicate it to all my gals: Leila, Bhargavi, Rose, and Maggie. I love you guys! I love loving this show with you guys! Thanks for being yourselves.

**one:**

  
  


It takes exactly one week of them dating— _barely even_ dating—for Ben to initiate the sex talk.

“Devi,” he says while she’s in the middle of kissing him, nudging her back with his nose.

She hates when he interrupts her like this.

“No,” she says, pressing forward, managing to get but a lip graze out of it before he’s pushing insistently at her shoulder. “Ben, I don’t want to talk about torque anymore, okay? Just shut up for longer than two minutes at a time for once in your life.”

A whine starts high in his nasal cavity and he’s about to argue with her, she can tell. She acts faster than him, though, sliding her leg over his thighs and pushing up off the headboard.

Air punches out of his lungs as she settles in his lap, and her lips are on his before he can pull in another breath.

He groans and, encouraged, she pushes her hands into his hair, grabs two fistfuls, and crushes him against her.

A moment later, she’s being dumped haphazardly onto the mattress and Ben’s no longer in the bed.

“You have _got_ to stop doing that!”

Devi flips her hair back off her face so she can scowl at him. “What the fuck is your damage, Gross?”

“Well, I wanna—you know.”

“No, dude, I don’t know,” she says, sitting up. “I think it’s safe to say I’m not picking up on any of the signals you’re putting out right now because you’re being hella weird.”

“I wanna have sex with you.” He says it like it’s a secret.

“That’s what you stopped us from doing to tell me this,” she says, blinking at him. “You realize that, right?”

“What? No,” he says. “I don’t mean right now. We weren’t about to have sex _right now_ , Devi.”

“Oh, please,” she says. “I know what _desperate for sex_ looks like.” She nods at his crotch.

Ben follows her gaze and blushes raspberry pink. He manages to sound impressively offhand when he speaks, though. “Oh, big deal. I once got hard thinking about rugelach.”

“Arugula? Why would lettuce make you horny?”

“Rugelach,” he corrects her. “And it wasn’t so much about the rugelach itself, more the—you know what? Beside the point.”

She’s snickering. “No, I want you to finish that sentence, Gross.” 

“Devi—”

“Nay, I demand you finish it.”

“Can you st—? Wait, no, this is good, actually.” He drops down on the edge of the bed far enough away from her that she’d have to point her toes to reach him. “Keep being annoying, you’re scaring the boner away.”

Devi frowns, flexing her foot so she can nudge at his knee. “How about I scare it back to life, instead?”

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

She shifts up onto her knees so she can tower over him while wearing her best hungry-wolf grin. “Wanna bet?”

He regards her for a moment, eyes wide. “Fine.”

“Uh-huh,” Devi says, waggling her eyebrows.

“You made your point, okay, don’t ruin it.”

“My logic is too flawless to ruin,” she says, sitting back.

“Well, I wouldn’t go that far.”

She rolls her eyes. “Just come back up here, dummy.”

“No.”

She scoffs. “Why not?”

“You have to tell me first.”

Her brow furrows. “Tell you what?”

He tucks one of his feet up under his knee, angling his body toward her. “Whether or not you want to have sex with me. If you’re actually ready to do it, like, right now. If you’d wanna do other stuff first. You know, any of it, really.”

“Uh.” She blinks so quickly, her picture of Ben’s stupidly eager face goes fuzzy. “That’s really personal, Gross.”

“We’re _dating_ ,” he says and, honestly, he needs to stop reminding her. He may sound all indignant, but she knows Ben Gross bragging when she hears it. “That tends to get personal, _David_.”

Her nostrils flare at the nickname. “Maybe I don’t actually wanna know you that well, ever think of that?”

Ben’s jaw tenses and he pulls his gaze away from hers.

Without it pinning her to her spot, her eyes jump to the door. If she moves fast enough, he probably won’t have time to break up with her.

“Devi,” he says, voice gruff.

She twitches. “I know it was a horrible thing to say, alright? And I know it’s our thing, but can you try not to say something to one-up it this once?”

“Okay.”

She looks at him. He’s back to staring at her, a goopy expression forming on his face. She unclenches.

“I mean,” he continues. “I agree to your terms. I wouldn’t call that _our thing_ , though.”

She raises her eyebrows. “You realize you’re proving my point by saying that, right?”

“Whatever,” he says, finally shifting back up to the head of the bed and grabbing his Physics textbook from off the ground.

She’d totally forgotten that they’d been studying before all this.

“Hey,” she says, punching him in the bicep.

He flinches. “If you’re going to insist on doing that all the time, can you pick a different part of me to hit every once in a while? I have a massive bruise there because of you.”

“Ben!”

He turns to her. “What?”

She cups his chin, gives him a peck.

When she pulls away, he’s grinning this dopey, lopsided grin at her. “You totally wanna get to know me better.”

“Shut up,” she says, pushing her face into his shoulder.

“That,” he declares with way too much pride, “is not a denial.”

She decides to let him have this one.

  
  


**two:**

  
  


“Hey, I bet I can finish this problem set before you.”

Ben glances up at her, one eyebrow arched. “What are we? Twelve?”

Devi grins. “I know you are, but what am I?”

He glares at her for a long moment.

“Go!”

“Wait,” he says, scrambling to tug the packet out of his math notebook. “That’s cheating.”

“Shouldn’t’ve gotten distracted with juvenile antics if you wanted to win,” she says, punching numbers into her calculator.

He growls, aggressively clicking out more lead from his pencil.

She’s already onto problem number three when she feels it: his stockinged foot nudging at her ankle. She assumes it’s an accident at first, so she swats him away.

When he retaliates by sliding his toes halfway up her calf, she knows he’s doing it on purpose.

She really shouldn’t cave—she knows he’s trying to distract her to get her back for cheating the start—but he’s been so standoffish ever since the weird moment in his bedroom.

It’s been nearly a week—fine, four days, if you wanna get technical—and it’s not like she’s starved for his touch or anything because that’d be stupid. But, well.

She clears her throat. “I know what you’re doing.”

“Beating you?” he asks, not looking up from the problem he’s working on.

“Using underhanded tactics to _try_ and beat me.”

“Underhanded?” He hooks his foot around her ankle, and she has to suppress a grin. “I don’t know what you mean.”

She smacks her pencil down on the table, all too eager to give up on homework. “And, honestly, footsie, Gross? You’re such a cliche.”

He sets down his pencil, as well, and looks at her, mirth dancing in his eyes. “Why fix what isn’t broken?”

With an offended scoff, she kicks him.

“Holy shit, David!” He pushes away from her dining room table so he can glance under it. “Cut your toenails, you miserable little goblin!”

She rolls her eyes. “Don’t be a drama queen.”

“I think I’m bleeding.”

“Poor baby.”

He glares at her. “This is no way to treat a guy you’ve just maimed.”

“Maimed?” She raises her eyebrows. “First of all, you baited me, and any sustained injuries are your own damn fault.”

“That’s some cracked logic,” he says. But then he’s grinning. “What’s the second of all?”

She smirks back like he’s her canary. But before she gets to deliver the line that clues him into how _devoured_ he’s about to be, her mom and Kamala walk in the front door, laden with groceries.

“Devi,” Nalini says. “A little help would be nice.”

Grumbling, Devi pushes up out of her seat and turns to accept a paper bag from her mother.

“Did you get the marshmallows?” she asks, poking at the grapefruit resting atop the other items.

“I did,” Kamala answers from the kitchen island, already putting groceries away. “The little tiny ones, just like you asked.”

“Baller.”

Nalini sighs as she steps out of her shoes. “Can you please say ‘thank you’ like a civilized human being?”

“I did.”

Her mom draws in a deep breath, ostensibly to argue that point, but then notices Ben for the first time. “Oh, Benjamin, hello. Devi told me you’d be dropping by to study.”

“Hi, Dr. Vishwakumar,” he says, smiling at her. “How was work?”

As Devi walks past him to the kitchen, she flicks his ear.

He flinches.

“Long,” Nalini answers, leaning over the chair Devi had been occupying just a moment ago. “Thank you for asking.”

Ben nods, his throat bobbing as he swallows.

Devi would find his obvious nervousness more entertaining if she weren’t also terrified of her mother getting suspicious and asking exactly the wrong question. Devi’s been trying not to lie to her as much—all the sneaking around she’d done with Paxton the year before had given her a permanent stomach ache—but if her mom asks after how more-than-friendly her and Ben seem lately, well.

Kamala snatches away the box of tea Devi’d just ripped open to smell, sticking out her tongue as she moves for the cabinet.

Devi sticks her tongue out right back.

But not even attempts to undermine perfect, chore-doing Kamala could distract her from hearing the next thing out of her mom’s mouth: “Are you staying for dinner?”

Ben’s, like, two seconds away from snapping his pencil in half when Devi’s head whips back toward the table. “I don’t want to impose…”

“Nonsense,” Nalini says.

He glances over at Devi, eyes wide and questioning. _Is this okay?_ he wants to know.

“Stay,” she says to him, gripping the edge of the island tight. “We haven’t finished _studying_.”

His eyes grow even wider. “I think we could probably _study_ any other time.”

“Is that a promise?”

He huffs, unimpressed with her.

“Dinner won’t be ready for at least forty minutes,” Kamala says, cheerfully oblivious. “You two have plenty of time to work.”

“It’s settled then,” Nalini says, unclipping the bracelet she has on and taking a step toward her bedroom. “Benjamin will stay for dinner.”

“Okay,” Ben says, and even though he tries to hide it, Devi notices his pleased smile.

It’s clear he’s not trying to share it, but she smiles back anyway.

###

“You’re getting better at that,” Devi says after dinner. She’d offered to clean up in the hope that Ben would join her while Kamala and her mom disperse.

Behold her success.

He glances down at the wooden spoon he’s drying. “Doing dishes?”

“I was thinking more along the lines of eating Kamala’s cooking without sweating.”

“Oh, well, in that case,” he says, “maybe don’t touch me for the rest of the night.”

She looks up from scrubbing congealed sauce off a pan. “Ew, Gross. Are you trying to turn me off?”

His eyebrows jump up his forehead. “Are you saying you were turned on a second ago?”

She considers it, turning off the faucet. “Not no.”

He glances over his shoulder like Devi just requested he take her, take her now, and he’s expecting Nalini to be there, knife in hand.

She snorts. “You’re ridiculous.”

“Uh, I think you mean practical.”

“Practically useless.”

He watches her as she takes a step closer to him. “Now you’re just being mean.”

“You called me a miserable goblin earlier,” she says, reaching out and hooking her pointer finger around his thumb.

He laughs. “I did, didn’t I?”

“Yes.”

“I assume you have ideas about how I can make it up to you.”

“You don’t have to say it like that,” she says, tugging down on his finger.

He’s still watching her, unmoved. “Like what?”

“All wary or whatever.”

He shrugs, pulling his hand away and tucking it into his pocket. “Can’t help it.”

She frowns at him. “I make you wary?”

“Not exactly,” he says, rocking forward so his weight is in the balls of his feet.

Her eyes are drawn immediately to his lips, infinitesimally closer than they were a second ago. She resents that kissing them isn’t really an option right now.

That’s probably why she snaps the next thing out of her mouth. “Just say what you mean, Gross.”

He settles back on his heels, a sad smile on his face. “It’s not you so much as, I don’t know. Not knowing exactly what you expect, I guess.”

She takes a step away from him, turning back to the sink. “Sorry we can’t all be as smooth as you,” she says peevishly. “ _I want to have sex with you!_ ”

“Will you keep it down?” he asks, eyes darting toward the living room again.

She finally manages to scrape the biggest hunk of charred sauce off the pan with one jab of a butter knife. “Grow a pair, Gross.”

“Take your own advice, David.”

“I have more balls than you ever will,” she says, whirling around and shoving the sopping pan against his chest.

The muscle in his jaw tenses when their eyes meet. “Say what you mean for once.”

She stares at him for a long moment, breathing growing ragged. He watches her back, expression unnervingly neutral.

It starts with a whooshing in her ears. Then her vision goes blurry and her brain begins to roar like a caged lion. In the next second, she’s grabbing his face in both hands and kissing him like she’s trying to bend metal bars enough out of shape to escape.

He stumbles back out of her grasp. “Are you trying to get me killed!?”

“Ah-hah!” She points a finger in his face. “I knew it!”

“Knew _what_?”

“This is all just an elaborate prank, right? Stalling.” She knows she’s not making much sense, but she can’t get her pacing-lion brain to slow the fuck down. “Because you’d never want to actually sleep with an unfuckable nerd! Isn’t that right?”

Ben’s hugging the wet pan to his chest like it’s the only thing grounding him to reality. “I—”

Someone coughs, and they both whirl around to find Kamala standing on the other side of the island, mug in hand.

“I could come back later…?” she says after a moment.

“Do whatever you want,” Devi says as she turns back to Ben. “I’m out of here.”

“Wait, but—” Ben starts to speak.

She slams the front door on the rest of his sentence.

###

Twelve minutes later, the sound of a car door falling closed up the street followed by Ben’s voice causes Devi’s head to snap up from between her knees.

“—turn around and go back home,” he’s saying.

Devi frowns at him as he approaches her.

He pins her to the spot with an annoyed stare. “Yeah, I’ll get her back soon.” A pause. “I promise.”

He hangs up and pockets his phone before dropping down next to her on the curb of the cul-de-sac. 

She turns to frown straight ahead.

“Random choice in scenery for an otherwise very dramatic runaway,” he comments after a moment.

“I’m not talking to you,” she says.

“Kamala’s pretty sure she can only guarantee your mom won’t notice you’re not in the house for another twenty minutes, so we kinda have to use our time wisely here,” he says, and she can hear how convinced he is that his argument’s a winner in his every word.

Her nostrils flare as the reliable, familiar bomb of hating him explodes in her stomach.

“I am using my time wisely, actually,” she says, “by not talking to you for nineteen minutes and forty-two seconds.”

He grunts, picking up a pebble from the ground. She watches out of the corner of her eye as he rolls it between his pointer finger and thumb.

“I don’t get you, David.”

She doesn’t answer.

Apparently, Ben decides not to let that stop him. “You didn’t like how we were before this year, but every time I try to act like things have changed, you yell at me.”

It’s her turn to grunt in annoyance. “I never said that.”

“You never say anything!” he says back, apparently not needing much to explode himself.

“Then why would you assume I didn’t like how things were before?” She yells it. They’re full-on yelling in each other’s faces in the middle of her neighborhood.

“I’m extrapolating!”

“Well, stop!” Devi says, starting to quiver. “You’re bad at it!”

He throws his head back and _laughs_ at her and she’s going to punch him in the throat and the second before she starts to regret it, it will feel immensely _satisfying_.

“You know, the thing is…” He’s back to looking her in the eye, and her teeth chatter. “…I don’t believe that I am.”

She’s utterly unable to come up with a response to that.

His expression morphs from aggravated to disarmingly soft as he watches her wrack her brain.

She pulls her eyes away, feeling wrung out all of a sudden. If she were to crawl into bed right now, she’d fall asleep in a heartbeat.

After a moment, Ben says, “I was kinda hoping you’d never bring up the whole UN thing.”

“I kinda planned not to,” she says.

He lets that sink in. “Yikes.”

She snorts. “Yeah.”

“For what it’s worth,” he says after a beat. “I’m sorry I ever used how well I know you for evil.”

She shakes her head. “That apology is so presumptuous, it’s practically useless.”

“Uh-huh,” he agrees. “Your turn.”

She narrows her eyes at him. “To give you a useless apology?”

“Yes.”

She can feel a smile nipping at her cheeks. 

After a second’s consideration, she says, “I’m sorry you think you found a clever way to bully me into telling you how good Paxton is at sex.”

His eyes widen.

“I mean, not that I know, anyway, we only ever—” She breaks off.

Ben seems stunned for all of one second, and then he’s tipping onto his back, propelled by a fit of giggles.

“Oh, my god,” she says, burying her head in her hands.

His laughter subsides a moment later. “You played yourself.”

“I really did,” she says.

“You gonna finish the sentence?” He asks the question as though, if he asks it quietly enough, he can sneak all the way inside her and explore before she notices.

She cranks around to see his expression, and the hope she finds there turns the bomb smoke in her stomach warm and dense.

Forcing herself to maintain eye contact, she says, “Did hand stuff.”

He grins at her. 

She swallows hard, watching him as he sits up.

Their faces are close all of a sudden. If she kissed him now, he probably wouldn’t pull away.

“You wanna hear mine?” he asks, stopping her from doing just that.

Her lip curls at the excited gleam in his eyes. “Not if you’re gonna sound so braggy.”

“Fine,” he says, and then he pushes up from the ground. He holds out his hand once he’s on his feet again. “Let’s get you back home.”

“You suck,” she says, but she takes his hand anyway.

  
  


**three:**

  
  


It takes Devi less than a day to cave.

_Fine, you win. I totally wanna know_ , she texts Ben at lunch while Fabiola’s yammering a mile a minute about all the last-minute upgrades the robotics team needs to make before their district tournament that weekend.

He shifts so he can pull his phone out of his pocket and his forearm brushes hers. He’s furnace-warm and it makes her want to curl into his side.

Since too much PDA still wigs her friends out, she shakes off the impulse in favor of continuing to smile blankly at Fabiola.

A moment later, she feels Ben glance over at her. She forces Fabiola’s words into focus.

“…and Mr. Fletcher is no help at all!”

“I’m sure you’ll get everything done, anyway,” Devi says. Her phone buzzes in her lap.

“Your platitudes are unhelpful and unwelcome,” Fabiola says.

Devi shrugs, unbothered. Fab always gets like this when she’s stressed.

“Do you want to go get some tea after school?” Eleanor asks her. “Center yourself before visiting the lab?”

Devi doesn’t hear what Fab thinks of that idea because she’s reading Ben’s text.

_Knew it was driving you crazy_.

She glances over at him to find him smirking at her.

_I hate you_ , she types without looking away from him, arching her eyebrow.

He checks his messages, snickers.

“I’m sorry, Ben,” Fabiola says. “Is my current predicament amusing to you?”

“Nah, _Rick and Morty_ meme,” he says, holding his phone aloft. “Wanna see?”

Devi elbows him in the side.

But, as she really should have predicted, Fabiola grunts in disgust the same way she does every time Ben brings up that show.

“You all suck,” Fabiola tells them, standing. “I’m finishing lunch in the lab.”

“This weekend can’t come fast enough,” Devi says as she stomps away.

“You two are bad friends,” Eleanor tells them.

Devi gasps. “Hey, there are only so many times I can hear about code patches or listen to the Should-Have-Just-Submitted-Gears speech before it’s _boring_ and there’s nothing supportive left to say.”

“Bad,” Eleanor says, enunciating, “friend.”

“But you love me?” Devi asks, sitting up taller and clasping her hands under her chin.

Eleanor hikes her purse up onto her shoulder and gets up. “Duh, always.”

“You going to check on her?” Ben asks.

“Oh, no, she definitely needs this to be an alone time,” Eleanor says. “I’m off to do some scene study.”

“Oh yeah?” Devi asks, waggling her eyebrows. “With your mysterious scene-study partner?”

There’s a mischievous spark in Eleanor’s eyes. “Maybe.”

“Scandalous.”

“With any luck,” Eleanor says wistfully before turning a knowing smile on Devi and Ben. “Don’t you two do anything I wouldn’t while unsupervised.”

Devi rolls her eyes at Eleanor’s retreating form. Ben huffs.

“Have you talked to them about—?” he asks. “You know.”

She scrunches her nose at him. “What kind of question is that?”

“Same kind as most,” he says, poking her waist. “Curious.”

“We talk about some of it, but not all of it,” she says.

“What kind of answer is that?”

She grins, angling herself toward him. “Why do you wanna know, anyway? Afraid I’m gonna gossip about your and Shira’s sex life?”

“Well, I wasn’t,” he says, “until you said something.”

“I won’t,” she says. “Or, probably won’t.”

“Reassuring.”

She headbutts his shoulder. “Tell me.”

“Okay,” he says, and she lifts her head. There’s a gleam in his eye that she definitely does not like. “But why the sudden change of heart?”

She raises her eyebrows.

“You were pretty adamant that you didn’t want to know last night, is all I’m saying.”

“Oh, my god,” she says. “Just tell me.”

“Wanna hear my theory?”

“I do not.”

“I think your crazed jealousy finally drove you to break,” he says, pleased as punch with this fresh bout of torture. “You can’t stand all the scenarios you’re imagining of me with another woman.”

“You know, the longer you draw this out, the more my willingness to sleep with you plummets.”

“Oh please,” he says. “I know desperate for sex when I see it.”

She gapes for a second, clamping onto his thigh and digging in her nails when she recovers. 

“That is _not_ funny!” she insists, but—dammit—she’s laughing.

“Ow, ow, ow, _okay_ ,” he says. “I give, I give.”

“Wimp,” she says, removing her hand.

“Dominatrix,” he volleys back.

“Oh, is kink our next scheduled topic of discussion?”

She’s being sarcastic, but Ben stills, the tips of his ears turning pink.

It’s honestly kind of a relief, his look of utter panic. Before she can tell him so, though, the bell rings.

###

Devi stares at the back of Ben’s neck while the class discussion of _The Canterbury Tales_ plods along. He stares determinedly ahead.

Finally, unable to stand it any longer, Devi slides her phone out and tucks it between the pages of her book.

It takes her three full minutes to type her message because she keeps pausing whenever the teacher’s eyes land on her. _I don’t know why you try so hard to act unflappable when it comes to this stuff._

She can tell when her text arrives because Ben twitches. But he doesn’t pull out his phone to look at it.

Huffing, she types another message. _I like you good and flapped_.

And then a moment later, another. _Makes me feel less alone._

He glances back at her when the third text arrives, eyebrows raised.

She blows him a kiss.

Evidentially, that piques his curiosity. A minute later, her own phone buzzes.

_I’m making you feel alone?_

She sighs, and she knows he hears it, because typing bubbles pop up in the chat.

_I didn’t mean to._

She rolls her eyes and then, several minutes later, sends her reply. _It’s just hard not to feel like a loser virgin who knows nothing about sex when every time I feel like I’m about to initiate it, you totally derail me._

Ben emits a whine of protest at exactly the wrong time, and all the heads of their classmates turn to look at him.

“Ben,” Mrs. Sloan says, “do you have a different reading of the Wife of Bath that you’d like to share?”

“Um,” he says, “she shoulders the legacy of White Feminism with pluck.”

“Okay. Care to unpack that some more?”

“No, thank you,” Ben says.

Devi snickers.

“Devi,” Mrs. Sloan says, already weary. “You have a counterpoint?”

“Just that wanting to feel in control and look hot forever is actually a universal female experience, so.”

“Really,” Ben says, turning all the way around in his chair. “That’s all you want in life? To marry a guy and assert your dominance?”

She sneers at him. “I didn’t say it was the only thing women wanted, dickhead, just that it was something that we all do.”

“Language!” Mrs. Sloan says.

“Um,” Fabiola says, raising her hand. “I think that’s a little heretonormative.”

“Well, we are talking about fourteenth-century gender roles,” Mrs. Sloan says.

“Are you saying gay people didn’t exist back then?” Fabiola asks, apparently deciding to use poor Mrs. Sloan as another outlet for her stress.

Devi assumes, anyway. Ben’s staring at her like he’s jiggling a key around in her lock, and she can’t be bothered to keep listening.

The thing about fighting with him in class now that they’re dating is that it feels like an inside joke. The consuming wildfire of anger she used to feel has morphed into chili paste set to simmer—a whole different kind of burning.

She knows he feels it, too. His eyes are oil-slick blue; one match could send him up in flames.

“…Review session tomorrow,” Mrs. Sloan’s saying, clearly starting to wrap up the class.

Ben forces his eyes back to the front of the room, and Devi blinks.

Her mind is still swimming, giving her a strange sense of unreality, when Mrs. Sloan releases the class thirty seconds early. Ben turns in his seat once again, winks at her, and then stands, swinging his backpack onto his shoulders. He’s gone before she’s even closed her notebook.

_Where does that leave us?_ she texts him when she’s seated in her study hall.

The period is halfway over before he messages back: _We’ll talk later._

Annoyed, she sends him three texts in quick succession.

_Tell me._

_Tell me!!_

_TEll ME._

This time his only reply is a winking face.

###

Devi resolves to beat him at his own game. If he’s going to be all cool and withholding, she can be, too.

So she doesn’t text him the rest of the school day, not even when she finishes the doodle of a horse posing like Ben Affleck with a cigarette she’d been working on for the past three days or when Mr. Chan makes an unbelievably dumb tempo joke that would probably make Ben smile. She doesn’t text him after she gets home or when Kamala makes a pointed comment about secrets and how good she is at keeping them or to brag about how quickly she finishes the Physics homework.

Except, he doesn’t text her either, and by the time she crawls into bed, she can feel her temper starting to crackle like a bag of Pop Rocks that’s just been added to a bottle of Coke.

After casting a glance at her closed bedroom door, she pulls the covers up over her head and dials his number.

“Hey,” he says when he answers, and his voice is so warm it feels like it’s oozing down her ear canal and settling honey-thick in her brain.

“It’s later,” she says, trying to hold onto her annoyance.

“Way later.”

His acknowledgement of how much time he let pass does the trick. “Why the fuck didn’t you call me, Gross?”

“Last I checked, you’re capable of dialing my number, David.”

“Obviously,” she says, gritting her teeth against a groan of frustration. Accidentally summoning her mom to her room would be the opposite of helpful.

“So what’s the problem, exactly?”

The fact that she can hear his smug grin is not helping matters. “I’m not the one who promised to divulge sensitive information.”

“No,” Ben agrees. “But you are the one who mentioned feeling a little out of control.”

She hisses, and claws the blanket off of her so she can sit up. “Oh, my god, dude, I have not been driven mad with jealousy or whatever the fuck you think is happening here.”

He has the audacity to laugh. “That’s not what I was talking about, you goblin.”

“Stop it, that is not going to become a thing.”

He hums. “I think it is, though.”

“Ugh!”

She can feel the effort it costs him not to laugh at her. So when he takes a deep breath, she does, too, timing it to his.

“Devi,” he says after letting the breath out. “I haven’t had sex.”

“That is…” She pauses, blinking at the shadowy depths of her open closet. “Not what I thought you were going to say.”

His voice goes all oozy warm again. “I didn’t mean to make you feel like I was lecturing you or something. I really do just want to know. What you’re thinking. How you’re feeling.”

“Well,” she says, raking her hand through her hair. “Mission objective failed.”

His amused huff fills her ear.

She allows her shoulders to relax, smiles.

“Can we start over?” he asks.

She pretends to consider it. “I mean…I guess that could be cool.”

“Yeah?”

She rolls her eyes. “Yeah.”

“Hey, Devi,” he says without missing a beat. “I’d really like to eventually have sex with you.”

“Eventually?”

“Yes.”

She nods. “Okay. Ben?”

“Hmm?”

She presses the phone harder against her ear and falls back in bed, whispering her next words as her head sinks into her sea of pillows. “Kissing you is, like, way hotter than any of the stuff I did with Paxton.”

He lets out a sharp exhale. Devi feels it whoosh through her gut.

“Damn, okay,” he says, like he’s the one scrambling to keep up all of a sudden. 

She presses a fist against her big, dumb smile, suppressing the urge to squeal. Once it subsides, she says, “Is it weird that that makes me kinda nervous to do other stuff?”

He hums thoughtfully. “Like, what do you mean?”

“If kissing you is that intense,” she says, voice slumber-party-secrets low, “what’s it gonna feel like to do anything else?”

“Mostly?” he says, matching her murmur-for-murmur even though he probably doesn’t have to worry about getting caught by nosy parents. “I hope it feels safe.”

“Oh.”

“That was a good ‘oh,’ right?”

She closes her eyes. “Definitely.”

“Okay, good.”

“I wish,” she says, breaking their shared moment of silence, “you were here right now.”

“I wish you were _here_ ,” he says. “Way more practical.”

She grunts.

He laughs a tinkling-piano laugh. “What?”

“Nothing,” she says. “It’s just that you’re right, and it screws up my whole fantasy.”

“There’s a fantasy, is there?”

“Tons,” she says. “And they never involve the words ‘Ben’s right’.”

“So weird,” he says. “ _All_ of my fantasies include those words.”

“They would.”

He laughs, and she curls onto her side, wishing the pillow she presses her face into were his neck.

“Hey, Devi?” he says after a long time, just before she crosses the threshold into sleep.

“Hmm?”

“Thank you.”

“For what?” she asks, the words coming out cotton-thick.

“Agreeing to start over,” he says. “Talking to me. Wanting to date me in the first place.”

She doesn’t have the wherewithal to say something jokey and dismissive like normal. So instead she simply says, “I like you.”

“Not as much as I like you, you goblin.”

She falls asleep with a traitorous smile on her face.

  
  


**four:**

  
  


“Hey, you should take the next exit.”

Ben glances over at the passenger seat, eyebrows raised. “But the GPS—”

“Yeah,” Devi says, cutting him off. “I know. We’re going off the grid, Gross.”

“Why?” he asks, his voice getting just as tight as it had been earlier that day, when they set out for Glendora High School, the site of Fabiola’s competition.

She can’t believe she finds him compelling even like this, tense as a new hair tie trying to hold her bushy ponytail.

“Just do it,” she says, setting her hand high on his thigh. “Please.”

He swerves halfway into another lane.

“Jeez, dude.” She snatches her hand back. “I can’t believe you’ve been driving for a year and you haven’t gotten any better at it.”

“That’s not fair,” he says, righting the car. “You’re—you know what you’re doing!”

She does, so she simply grins at his profile.

His jaw clenches…and doesn’t unclench until he merges onto the off-ramp for Pasadena.

“What are we doing here?” he asks finally, when they’re stopped at a red light.

“Looking for an empty parking lot or something,” she says, pulling out her own phone to check what’s around.

“Devi, your mom—”

“Will assume we got stuck in traffic,” she says, triumphant. “That’s, like, forty minutes we don’t have to account for at all.”

“What if we actually do get stuck in traffic, though?”

“You’re overthinking this,” she says, waving his concern away. “Oh! Park and Ride! That’s perfect.”

“You’re the one who’s definitely underthinking this,” he says, but he still accepts her phone, studying the highlighted route.

No more than two minutes later, they’re parked in the far corner of the mostly-empty lot. Ben turns off the car and shoots her an unimpressed look. “Now what?”

“You,” she says, “need to get into the spirit.”

“The spirit of _what_?”

Devi waggles her eyebrows in answer, and then dives into the backseat.

She feels one of her heels connect with flesh, and sure enough, Ben grunts.

“You just kicked my shoulder,” he tells her.

She settles in the backseat, righting the skirt of her dress and patting the space next to her. “Come back here and I’ll make it up to you.”

He’s leaning against the center console, blinking at her. “You could have just used the doors, you know.”

“No way,” she says, deadpan. “Show me.”

That gets him to crack. He hangs his head as he laughs. And a moment later, he’s pushing open the driver’s side door. The internal lights come on, making it harder for Devi to see outside into the ever-growing shadows.

“Okay, I’m here,” he says, dropping heavily into the backseat and pulling the door closed. “What—?”

She scrambles into his lap before he can finish asking his question.

He groans appreciatively as her nails dig into his shoulders and her lips find his, but she can’t help notice the way he doesn’t touch her back, doesn’t throw himself into the kiss.

She pulls away. “Hey.”

He searches her face, a ghost of a grin on his lips. “Hey yourself.”

“Thanks for coming with me today.”

His hands land on her hips in response. He squeezes, and it’s a gentle gesture, but it still causes her to squirm.

“Robotics is really interesting, actually.”

She raises one eyebrow at him. “That’s what made the drive worth it for you?”

“Well, if I ever figure out what’s going on right now, maybe I’ll amend my statement, but. Yeah. Robots made the drive worth it.”

“Come on, dude,” she says, shaking him. “You know what’s happening here. You’re a smart guy.”

He breathes a laugh. “Can I get you to say that again, on record?”

She whines. “Ben!”

He leans forward to bump the end of his nose against hers. “Devi.”

A delighted shiver trips down her spine, but she forces herself to focus, to look into Ben’s eyes instead of stare at his lips.

“Are you being obtuse on purpose?” she asks. “Because, y’know, you don’t want to?”

He shakes his head.

“Then what’s happening here?”

“I am once again asking you to make your expectations clear.”

With a groan, Devi tips forward, face-planting into Ben’s shoulder. “I hate your Bernie Sanders impression.”

He shakes with laughter. “Because it’s so good it makes you feel like you’re about to get it on with an old man?”

She bites down on his collarbone, and he doesn’t even flinch. 

“I’m taking that as a yes,” he tells her, turning his head so he’s speaking into her hair.

With another shiver, she sits back up.

“Ben.”

“Yes, Devi?”

“I wanna try something, okay? Something more than kissing.”

His mouth slackens into a little ‘o’ of surprise. She hums, leaning in to kiss it.

“You know,” he says, several minutes later, after the interior lights have clicked back off and she’s moved her lips down to his neck. “It’s not like we have to rush it.”

“Yeah,” she says, squashing her nose against the hollow behind his ear. “You’ve made your feelings on that way clear.”

He shakes his head, his chin bumping against her cheek. “It’s like you hate talking to me or something.”

“Sometimes I do,” she says, chomping down on his earlobe to emphasize her point.

He yelps, his hands flexing around her hips. Pressing her down against his lap.

Suddenly, she’s certain what it is they’re going to do.

“Ben,” she says, pulling far enough away to look him in the eye. “Do you feel safe right now?”

He blinks rapidly, and that makes Devi grin.

“Uh, yeah. Yeah, I do.”

She slides down onto the floor of the car with poor grace, her one knee landing hard on his right foot and head knocking back against the driver seat.

When she’s settled, she looks up at him, cringing at herself. He’s watching her with a gratifying hunger in his eyes, though, and her embarrassment dissipates immediately.

“How about now?” she asks. “Still feel safe?”

“Not exactly the word that comes to mind,” he says, his voice ragged around the edges. “But if you’re asking for permission…?”

She toys with the button on his jeans, still watching his expression. She bets this is what it feels like to do drugs—lightheaded wonder and every second lasting a full hour.

“I am.”

She can see his throat bob from this vantage point. “You’re sure about this?”

“Oh, my god, dude, yes or no!”

“Yes!” he says. “God, Devi, the answer is yes.”

She laughs—and she can’t help it if it sounds a little mad-scientist; she feels addictingly powerful right now—and pops the button open.

###

“Weird,” she says a little later, licking her lips and hoisting herself back up onto the seat. Discreetly, she wipes her hands on her dress.

Ben doesn’t lift his head, which had lolled back a while ago, but cuts his eyes at her. “Weird?”

“Not—I’m just really fucking thirsty now.”

He sits up immediately, glancing around. “I should really keep water bottles in here or something.”

She gasps. “You’d clutter your car for me?”

He rolls his eyes. “If it means you’re marginally more comfortable doing that again, then yeah.”

She snorts, resting her temple against his shoulder once he sits back. “I’m surprised you’re not more worried about, I dunno, car mat sanitation or some shit.”

He lets out a whine. “Why would you say that?”

She cackles, and then flushes hot at how thick the sound is coming from her throat. Coughing lightly, she says, “It’s all you can think about now, isn’t it?”

“No,” he says defensively. “Not _all_.”

“So it was good?” She can’t help checking.

He grins. “Are you being obtuse on purpose?”

She punches him in the side. “That was a terrible impression of me.”

“My Bernie Sanders is better.”

“I can’t commit to that,” she says, shaking her head.

“Devi, yes, it was—” She feels him draw in a sharp breath, his shoulder rising steeply. “Fuck.”

She giggles, turning to press her face against his arm. “It was _fuck_ for me, too.”

“Not too intense?”

“No,” she says. “No, it was…” She searches for the words to sum up the experience but gives up with a groan, pulling off of him. “Talking about this shit is too weird. I officially like _doing it_ way more.”

He flashes her an impish grin, reaching over to smooth some of her flyaways back from her forehead. “Wanna find out how _having it done_ factors in?”

Her stomach is suddenly a trap door swinging open. He’s offering to…

“Um,” she says, “what time is it?”

She doesn’t wait for his answer, leaning over into the front seat to dig her phone out of her bag.

They’ve been parked for thirty-three minutes.

She flashes the time at him. “We gotta go, dude.”

“But—” He starts to protest.

“We could hit traffic,” she says, smirking triumphantly. She loves using his own logic against him.

He eyes her like his bullshit sensors are going bezerk. She blinks innocently back at him.

“Wrath of Nalini,” she says.

He frowns and pushes the door open. “Yeah, yeah, let’s go.”

This time, Devi uses the door to transition from back to front.

Ben brushes at her wrist as she buckles her seatbelt, and her heart attempts to set off an earthquake in her stomach.

“Rain check,” he says. “Yeah?”

She smiles, feeling her pulse beat against her lips. How’d she get to be this far gone for him?

“Shut up and drive, Gross. We’re on a time crunch here.”

  
  


**five:**

  
  


“Can I ask you something?”

Devi pushes back so she’s kneeling between Ben’s thighs. “Right now?”

“Well, yeah,” he says, an all-over blush blooming on his skin. “A second from now, I’m definitely gonna be too distracted to talk.”

“What about the time it took us to drive here from school?”

“Was distracted then, too,” he says, and then deliberately drops his gaze.

She cocks her head at him. “Make it quick, Gross.”

“You always come up with some excuse,” he says, pushing up onto his elbows, “to stop me from doing this to you.”

“That’s not a question,” she says, and then starts to lean back over him.

He pulls away from her, shifting into a sitting position with a scoff. “I am clearly inviting you to tell me why.”

“Hmm,” she says, watching him rub at the back of his neck with a frown. “Pass.”

He laughs, but there’s a frustrated edge to it. “Devi, come on.”

“You know,” she says, throwing her hands up as she gets to her feet, “any other guy in the world would be thrilled with this arrangement!”

He narrows his eyes at her. “And what arrangement is that exactly?”

She steps down off the mattress with a _thunk_ , and then whirls around to face him. “All blow jobs, all the time, for no effort in return, obviously!”

“Why do you have to do that?” His nostrils flare. “Why do you have to make it sound like I’m bullying you into it?”

She laughs coolly at that. “No, you basically tried to bully me out of it.”

“Well, if you’re having such a bad time, then—”

“I clearly like doing it, you idiot!” She speaks over him, not wanting to hear the end of his sentence. “It’s not like you could force me into doing something I don’t want, anyway. I’m way stronger and cooler than you.”

He ignores the dig, keeping her on topic with the determination of a conductor trying to steer a runaway freight train back onto tracks.

“In what way have you made anything about your feelings clear?”

“Haven’t you been paying attention?” She practically wails the question. “This is all I wanna do. It’s like, freaking—it’s all I can think about!”

“And you don’t think I’d be the same way about you,” he says,” if you’d only give me the chance?”

“That’s just the thing.” She crosses her arms over her chest. “Thinking about giving you the chance makes me…” She shudders.

He catches it, gaping. “Feel disgusted?”

She groans. “Overwhelmed!”

“Bad overwhelmed?”

“Not entirely,” she says, shaking her head.

He’s watching her with his gentle, oil-slick eyes. “Unsafe overwhelmed.”

It’s not a question this time, and Devi feels her stomach squirm.

“No,” she disagrees, and realizes she’s not just doing it because it’s her first impulse, always. There’s a part of her that means that _no_.

“So why?” he asks in a tip-toeing, key-jiggling voice.

She doesn’t know how to tell him, how to put into words the feeling in her gut that insists that being vulnerable is _danger_. Is _big_ in a life-altering way—and she kinda likes her life right now, actually. Things are surprisingly good. No alterations necessary.

He reads something in her expression that makes him nod. “Dropping it.”

She blinks, not at all as relieved as she should be.

He clears his throat. “Just, do me a favor. Let me know when you sort it out, okay, whatever it is? Because I want to, Devi. And not in a weird, transactional kind of way. Just because I really, really…well. Want to.”

She swallows, and then before either of them are expecting it, she kneels on the edge of the bed and kisses him.

“Ben,” she says, barely lifting her lips from his to do so.

“Hmm?”

“You get,” kiss, “that,” kiss, “I just,” kiss, “figured,” kiss, “it out, right?”

He grabs onto her shoulders, grip tight, and forces her far enough away to look her in the eye. “You’re serious right now?”

She holds his eye until she feels a dam burst somewhere inside her and sweep him up into her current, and then nods.

With a deftness that leaves her breathless, he wraps his arms around her waist, drags her across his lap, and presses her into the mattress.

“I promise, you will not regret this.”

Devi laughs weakly, covering her eyes with an arm tossed over her face as he slides down between her thighs. “You were being so smooth, and then you just turned the desperate dial up to eleven.”

He chokes out a halted whine. “Well, can you blame me? I _am_ desperate.”

And then he smooths a palm up her stomach, pushing her shirt out of his way, and presses a kiss beside her belly button.

Every follicle of hair on her body stands at attention.

“Desperate is growing on me,” she says, and it’s embarrassing, the way her voice wobbles.

“Oh, really?”

She grunts. “You don’t get to sound cocky until you prove you’ve got something to be— _jesus christ_!”

His laughter is far too self-satisfied but, in another second, she’s too distracted to care.

###

“So,” Ben says, leaning over the side of the bed to snag his shirt off the ground. “Was it every bit as horrible as you imagined it would be?”

“Shh,” Devi says. “Devi’s not here right now.”

“Oh?” He wipes off his face before tossing the shirt back down. “Where is she?”

She contemplates the question, her eyes drifting closed. “The Ganges.”

The bed shifts beside her, and when she peeks out of one eye, it’s to find Ben next to her on his stomach, chin propped on a fist, watching her.

“Like, the river?”

She _hmm_ s. “Figure it out, Gross.”

“Oh, I’m gonna,” he says. “Gonna decode you bit by bit.”

“Sounds nice.”

He snorts.

“What?”

“I’ve never seen you this chill before,” he says. “It’s a little disturbing, actually. Unnatural.”

She closes her eye again. “Devi can’t hear you right now.”

He starts to poke her in the shoulder. “Rise to my bait, dammit. Fly off the handle.”

“Mm, can’t. Too much.”

He’s silent for a moment, then whispers, “I broke her.”

“‘S not permanent.”

A beat.

“Seriously, it wasn’t horrible, right?”

She laughs, and he whines, but—honestly—it’s such a ridiculous question, she can’t help it if that’s her first reaction.

“Ben,” she says after getting her giggles under control. “I did not reach this state of total zen because you bored me into it.”

He smooths his lips along her arm. “So, you’ll let me do that again?”

His breath on her skin makes her shiver. “Um, yeah,” she says, opening her eyes again and shifting onto her side so she can watch his face. “You can do that whenever you want.”

“I’ll do it whenever _you_ want,” he amends.

She reaches out to run her fingers around the curve of his chin, up along his jaw. “What if I want it, like, an unreasonable amount?”

He lets out a shaky relieved laugh, and she feels it on the pads of her fingers. “Finally!”

She gives him a funny look. “Finally, what?”

He squirms closer to her, leaning in for a kiss so she tastes his next words more than she hears them. “We’re on the same page.”

  
  


**+one:**

  
  


“Whoa,” Devi says.

“Yeah,” Ben agrees.

“That was…” She pauses, searching for words. “Well, honestly, it was a little anticlimactic.”

Ben turns to look at her, eyebrows furrowed. “Anticlimactic?”

“Oh, no, I definitely _climaxed_ ,” she says, poking his leg with her toes. “I just mean, the event itself was kind of a letdown.”

He narrows his eyes at her. “You’re trying to give me a complex, aren’t you?”

“No, dude, listen.”

“I _am_ ,” he says, shifting onto his side so he can watch her without craning his neck.

“It’s just,” she says, wriggling closer to him. “That was supposed to be the finish line, right? Sex. Doin’ it. The ole penis-and-vagina showdown.”

He nudges at her shoulder with a groan. “Please stop.”

She flings her arms up in front of her, yelling loud enough to fill Ben’s empty house. “Sex isn’t the most fun you can have, people! Media is a lie!”

“Who are you talking to?” he asks, bemused.

She smacks him on the chest. “You, duh. See anyone else around?”

He snorts. “Not usually.”

She grins and, having made her point, lets her eyes fall closed.

A second later, though, Ben asks, “So, what is?”

She cracks open an eyelid to peek at him. “What is _what_?”

He trails a finger down along her abdomen. “What’s the most fun you’ve had?”

She doesn’t hesitate even a second. “When you go down on me.”

He considers that. “Okay, I can live with that, actually.”

“I think you should die like that.”

His finger moves to trace the parenthesis of her hip bone. “Excuse me?”

“I think I’m gonna start working out. You know, so I can crush your head between my thighs.”

“Um…” He stills.

“Imagine me cradling your head in place with just enough force so you can’t escape. Forever.”

“I feel like I should be worried that ten seconds after sex with me, you’ve started plotting my demise.”

Devi’s grinning as she glances down her body. “Here lies Ben Gross. He died doing what he loved most.”

He scoffs. “Why does my epithet sound like it’s from a rejected Dr. Seuss book?”

“Because I lifted it directly from his lesser known work: _Ben Gross the Pussy Goblin_.”

He raises his eyebrows, definitely trying to decide if he’s more unnerved or amused. “I don’t think this is what I ever pictured when I heard people talking about post-coital bliss.”

She grabs his face in both hands. There’s a wave of giggles rising inside her. “You were picturing it wrong, Gross.”

“You know what,” Ben says, and suddenly he’s looking at her like he’s seconds away from courting death between her thighs. “I totally was.”


End file.
